Shh, shh - you'll give away my secret - <looks around furtively> I don't want everyone to know I'm a closet Luddite
HEHE. I know what you mean. I'm a "slow adopter" where technology is concerned. I was using Win/98 until three weeks ago when I was finally dragged kicking and screaming into upgrading to XP.
As a work around, you could always copy the last MPC - then the settings would be there when you edit it for the new requirements...
Once modified, copy it to the clipboard and paste in the next location...
You did say you were doing these AFTER having done the rest of the notation entry...
That's what I do now. But if I'm working down the score vertically, adding expression to notes already in place, then I have to keep going back to the last MPC on each staff as I come to it. Yes, it can be done that way, but wouldn't be cool if it could be done an easier way? (What do you mean you want a pencil sharpener? You don't need a pencil sharpener. You could scratch the notes into clay tablets with a stick.)
I was just editing the performance version of a score and putting in lots of expression controllers as MPCs (actually mod wheel controllers for Garritan GPO). Now when I want to do a cresc, for example, I first need to scroll back towards the beginning of the staff to see what control values my last MPC had so I can start with that value and then sweep up from there. BUT... suppose the MPC edit window, instead of defaulting to some arbitrary value, defaulted the first setting to whatever the most recent setting was on that staff.
In other words, suppose I want a chord to fade slightly as it is held. 20 measures back I put in a MPC with a value of 34. Now when I go to insert a new controller the dialog pops up with the value 34 as the default instead of 64. Now I don't have to scroll back 20 measures and edit the previous MPC to read its value. Wouldn't that be cool?
How about this as a compromise: Enter the controller data with MPC's but have the option of displaying the MPC data graphically. At least that way you could tell when you got the MPC's right. I have a recurring problem with overlapping MPC's where I set up a ramped cresc. MPC, for example, and then follow it with a quieter absolute MPC, but the ramp goes a few ticks beyond the lower absolute MPC and then I wonder what's wrong when the absolute MPC doesn't take effect. It took effect but the tail of ramp canceled it out.
I've tried a few other notation programs that offer graphic controllers, but they're not Noteworthy. E.G. Notation Composer that looks like this:
The problem it it has other "features" that are just plain annoying! I want to keep my Noteworthy. I just wish it had graphical controllers. Oh well. No software is perfect I guess.
I'll stick with Noteworthy anyway. It's the best so far.
Since the focus of Noteworthy is notation, I see your point. The problem with sequencers, however, is that I just can't read piano roll as fluently as I read scores, so I find it difficult to work with. I'd rather just do all my work in one piece of software instead of having to go back and forth. In addition, once I've added dynamics in a sequencer I can't go back and reload the project into Noteworthy to make changes without loosing all my dynamics changes.
As a compromise, it would be nice if Noteworthy preserved all the controller values while importing a MIDI file instead of discarding them all. But that's another whole can of worms in itself.
Maybe I'll have to write my own stand-alone C++ program to display notation and controllers together. But that is yet a third can of worms, and could take years! The whole reason I retired is so I could stop programming and start composing.
Here's a feature that would be really fantastic: The ability to draw controller values graphically instead of using MPC commands. There could be a pop-up window for the currently selected staff that looked like this:
That would make life SOOOO much easier when editing scores for performance on a synth.
It's just so hard to try to visualize what a series of MPC's are doing in a passage. The popup could show whichever controller was selected, pitch bend, mod, velocity, tempo, etc.... Then a pencil tool could be used to draw the contour freehand, or a line tool to draw point-to-point ramps for cresc, etc.
The KS Key Switches change how an instrument is played. The key switch note, which is silent, is played to make the change take effect. For example, with a solo violin F (8va below the violin range) puts the violin in pizzicato mode, E is down bows, D# is up bows, D is alternate up and down bows, C is sustain for legato, G is tremolo, F# is tremolo mute, etc. etc. In the woodwinds D is play note without vibrato, C is play with vibrato, E is play with flutter, etc. etc. Brass has key switches for muted and open, and so on.
Yes, the mpc's could have gone in the same staff, but I found it hard to work with them when they are mixed in with the notes.
What would REALLY be awesome would be if you could display a single staff at the top of the screen and a graphical representation of the controllers below so you could "draw" controller contours like you can in a sequencer program.
As a long-time Noteworthy Composer user new to Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO), I'm discovering some handy hints and tricks that work well with GPO.
To begin with, to produce good performance dynamics requires a lot of manipulation of the mod wheel CC1 values. For various technical reasons which I don't understand, GPO uses note velocity to set only the attack strength of the note, and uses the mod wheel to control the sustained loudness and timbre of the instrument while the note is held. Working on the score to the first movement of Beethoven's Sixth symphony as my "training piece", I have discovered what I think might be the best way to insert detailed CC1 and velocity controls into the performance.
For each instrument create an extra staff placed immediately below the instrument staff, and assign this to the same Garritan Studio channel as the instrument staff. For example, immediately below the staff labeled "Violins I" I add a staff labeled "Violins I KS and CC". GPO uses Key Switch (KS) notes to control articulation in various instruments, such as up bow vs down bow on violins, etc. These are mapped to notes far below the normal instrument range. Even though the first violins are in the treble clef I put this extra staff in the bass clef and in the midi properties mark it as transposed -12. That way the KS note values map into the clef in easily readable positions. For example, "F" for Pizz maps to the high F of the bass clef in the transposed control staff, and is quickly Identifiable as "F", as opposed to having it extended way below the staff by some number of lines that have to be counted to figure out what the KS note is. (KS notes can also be annotated using the "edit Lyrics" command for the controller staff to add text like "UpBow" under the note itself.)
Next, fill the entire control staff with measures filled with short valued rests consistent with the note values of the piece. For example, in Beethoven 6 mv 1 (in 2/4) I fill the entire control staff with eighth rests.
Now I can place MPC controllers between any two rests. In some cases, where the controller value needs to be adjusted just slightly before the note is hit to avoid sudden "jumps" during the first few microseconds of the attack, you can split the 1/16th rest in the controller staff into two 1/32 rests and put the controller value 1/32 before the note is played.
A couple of advantages of this is method are 1) the mod wheel values stand out from the clutter of notes, 2) A controller measure can be copied and pasted into a later spot in the same staff or at a matching spot in another instrument's staff allowing the dynamic contour of a single measure or an entire passage to be duplicated into other measures even when those two measures have completely different sequences of notes. Only the CC1 values are copy-pasted. So when the oboe takes the melody line from the strings, the oboe can be given a copy of the string's CC1 contours for the whole passage with a single copy and paste. 3) If at some later date you wish to "enrich" the string section, for example, by adding a couple layered solo instruments you can copy-paste the entire controller staff from the section instrument staff into the solo instrument staff so that the newly added solo instrument follows the same performance dynamics of the section staff.
Place your dynamic (velocity) notations between the note staff and the controller staff for maximum visibility. Vertical position -8 works well. Here's an example from Beethoven's 6th mv 1, first violins:
I've been using NWC for 10 years and I'm very happy with it. I'm making the switch from my hardware synth to the Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO). People on the GPO forums are telling me I should get Finale or Sibelius, and my first thought is WHY? I've got NWC and it does everything I want.
My question is this: has anybody used NWC with Garritan? How do I set it up so NWC sends the midi messages to a software synth? I'm new to this whole software synth thing, so in this area I'm a complete newbie. (on edit: I'm using NWC version 1.75a)
